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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941064">bloody kisses, citrus smiles</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur'>CherFleur</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sea Shanties [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>One Piece</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Kinda, Multi, Old stuff I'm starting to post, Self-Insert, We gonna change some things, Why must all the good parents die, oc-insert, world building</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:21:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,705</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25941064</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The juices from the tangerines stung the cuts in her mouth, tasting like hot copper and childhood memories.</p>
<p>People came and people went, but the pieces they left behind stayed forever.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Bell-mère &amp; Nami &amp; Nojiko, Bell-mère &amp; Portgas D. Rouge, Bell-mère/Akagami no Shanks | Red-Haired Shanks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Sea Shanties [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882600</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>92</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Reincarnation and Transmigration</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Here, Fisch. Suffer more.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Belle-Mère was two when she finally realized that something wasn’t quite right.</p>
<p>That she wasn’t quite normal.</p>
<p>Dreams which had plagued her for as long as she could remember but could never hold onto when she woke, started to linger in the mornings. Slowly becoming more and more concrete the older she got, had context with which to hold pieces together.</p>
<p>They were… confusing.</p>
<p>At first.</p>
<p>They made her head ache and her hands shake, skin feeling too tight as she struggled to take deep breaths that felt took shape because her chest was so small, because something just <em>wasn’t right</em> here. She shouldn’t have the knowledge that she did, she knew, because she was little, she was young, she wasn’t even old enough to go to the school in the village, but she did. Belle-Mère <em>knew </em>things, understood concepts that were way above her age range, because she had <em>dreamed </em>about them, had remembered them even though she wasn’t quite sure when she’d learned them in the first place, and she was sure that she would remember <em>that.</em></p>
<p>One of the clearest things she remembered, was fighting.</p>
<p>So… she did it. A lot.</p>
<p>It was comforting. Simple.</p>
<p>Never easy.</p>
<p>With older kids and kids her age, but never anyone younger, because she remembered that it was wrong to pick on people smaller than you, even though it seemed an abstract concept. Fighting was supposed to be about defending, about protecting those that couldn’t for themselves, but it was confusing in a way that Belle-Mère couldn’t comprehend yet.</p>
<p>She stood up to bullies and was always ready for a tussle. Enjoyed embarrassing people when they talked down to her by snapping back comebacks that were full of innuendos that she hadn’t even understood until they left her lips. It was a rare day when Belle-Mère didn’t return to her family’s little house outside of their tangerine orchard with a new bruise or cut, though she rarely broke bones or sprained things.</p>
<p>A bloody grin on a mouth full of teeth too big for her, or gaps just filling in, and always, always a story to tell.</p>
<p>Those hazy memories from her dreams helping her to know how not to seriously injure herself in a tussle with the other kids. Sometimes her body would move in a way, react in a way that she didn’t expect, as if some muscle memory was coming into play, like she’d had training at some point.</p>
<p>But that wasn’t right, because there were no actual fighters on their island. No one formally trained, and the moves that Belle-Mère was remembering were much too complicated for the few things that the people of Cocoyashi had picked up over the years.</p>
<p>When she wasn’t fighting, however, she could be found browsing the bookstores and the tiny library that was the hobby of an elderly couple who’d lived on the island for <em>ages. </em>Looking for something, <em>anything</em>, to explain her dreams, those memories that she had that weren’t supposed to be there.</p>
<p>The things that she knew that she knew that she <em>shouldn’t</em> know, how some things were drastically different from what she’d dreamt about. How the world was different and sometimes the maps made her confused because no, surely there should be large continents, land masses, not four oceans separated by mountains. Not only islands sitting in vast, vast oceans.</p>
<p>There had been – there had been something about poles and magnetism, but it made Belle-Mère’s head hurt to think about.</p>
<p>It was an odd contrast to the people of the village, and a source of exasperation to her parents, that all she seemed interested in doing was throwing hands and reading. Two very different pass times, but there always seemed to be a general sigh of relief when she waltzed into the bookstore over getting taunted into a fight with teenagers five years older than she was.</p>
<p>Still, it took her a while to cotton on to what had actually happened to her. Why she was the way she was, so different, so alien from the people around her.</p>
<p>Ten years.</p>
<p>Ten <em>years</em> was what it took, after she’d realized that she was different from other people, for her to find her answer to her situation. Well, that and a new shipment of books from another island.</p>
<p>Ten stupid years for the obvious to smack right in the face.</p>
<p>Her choices were between precognition – which didn’t seem right – and reincarnation, which actually felt like it struck a chord, but also seemed less likely. She knew that precognition was actually a thing for people who lived on the Grand Line, certain ones, anyway, and it was said that the greatest and strongest Marines and pirates could do something similar.</p>
<p>They were her only choices, though, and while it seemed unlikely, reincarnation fit the best.</p>
<p>Somehow, for some reason, Belle-Mère had been born again, in what she got the feeling was a completely different world than the one she’d known before or at least a long, <em>long </em>time in the future or something.</p>
<p>When she learned about the forgotten century, she'd side eyed that thought carefully.</p>
<p>Maybe the past. <em>Maybe</em>.</p>
<p>Still didn’t seem right, but she didn’t really have any better theories other than some weird Devil Fruit bull that could have yanked her soul around.</p>
<p>“Belle-chan, are you done looking yet?” her mother asked her from the doorway of the storefront. “We have to take Mrs. Hargo her shipment.”</p>
<p>“Yeah,” she said, putting her books back in place neatly, pushing the thoughts aside for another time to ponder over them. “I’m coming, Kaa-san.”</p>
<p>“My, my, Belle-Mère-chan is certainly getting quite responsible, isn’t she?”</p>
<p>“It’s better than her beating up poor Denton, isn’t it?”</p>
<p>“That kid had it coming, the ruffian.”</p>
<p>“Yeah, he tramped my hydrangeas!”</p>
<p>~*~</p>
<p>The older she got, the more of those memories played out in her dreams, following her into the waking world, and the more that Belle-Mère learned about herself and the world around her. The more she delighted and puzzled over every difference, every little facet of who she’d once been, and who she’d become instead.</p>
<p>Since her memories from her supposed – she still wasn’t entirely convinced – previous life involved a lot of fighting, she’d taken to training her body to help her center herself. Belle-Mère used the physical exertion to sort through the memories that would help her in her life and the ones that seemed superfluous.</p>
<p>Did she need to know about the geography of countries that didn’t exist anymore? Nope. Toss those memories aside and let them fade. Would being able to fix up a vehicle engine help her? Well, only if the engineering principals were the same, so <em>maybe</em>. Keep that just in case. Knowing the katas for like, four different martial arts with masteries? Oh, yes, definitely <em>yes</em>.</p>
<p>Not that she’d really needed to know how to kick ass just yet, and she didn’t remember <em>everything </em>about them immediately, but it was better to be safe than sorry, right? At least her past self had thought so, what with all of the survival and combat information that she’d had.</p>
<p>The experience.</p>
<p>There were… bad days.</p>
<p>Well, not all of the dreams were fantastic ones. Belle was pretty sure that her counterpart had been in a war or something, constantly bombarded by bombs and gunfire, hiding in trenches and stuff like that. Practicing guerilla warfare, being deployed from helicopters in the dark to sneak behind enemy lines with only enough equipment for one; a one man army.</p>
<p>Of course, that only came back after her dad had taken her out to show her how to use the old pistol they had, and suddenly Belle-Mère had woken up with a world of <em>pain </em>behind her eyelids.</p>
<p>There was a lot of death in there, a lot of gruesome pictures of bodies torn apart by shrapnel, burned beyond recognition by flames or gasses. Friends slowly bleeding out beneath her hands, a collection of metal tags that bore the names of those that she’d lost when families hadn’t come to claim them.</p>
<p>Whoever it was that had come before – she wasn’t even positive that that person had been female, sometimes it felt wrong – they had been a soldier.</p>
<p>Belle-Mère figured she owed it to them, to do them proud. To live life to the fullest of her ability to make up for all the sadness the one who came before had lived through.</p>
<p>She liked helping, even if it was just herself.</p>
<p>Luckily, thankfully, to balance out all of the horror that woke her in cold sweats and tears in the night, biting her lips to keep cries and screams from tearing from her throat, there were also good memories. A bird that looked like a pet named Peaches that had sung sweet rhymes every time that she had entered the room, a cat named Boots that was super fat and the worst cuddler ever and never let her out of his sight when she was in the house.</p>
<p>A stream of friends that would go through her life, some constant from childhood. Others transiently. Nieces and nephews that would crawl all over her, laughing and happy, their drawings stuck to the fridge in places of honor, their pictures in her wallet to carry with her. No children of her own, but that didn’t seem to displease her other self, because there were just <em>so many </em>kids to spoil when she had the chance anyway.</p>
<p>And, well, living as dangerously as her other self had… the chances of leaving them orphaned were pretty high.</p>
<p>When she was older… after puberty settled in around fourteen, streams of lovers, both male and female, had drifted through as well. Confusing the hell out of her when she wasn’t <em>embarrassed</em>, but as with everything she dreamed, she accepted it and moved on.</p>
<p>It wasn’t uncommon in this life for someone to enjoy both genders, it was much more rare for them to only stick to their own gender, however, which was frowned on, since there was little chance of children that way. To most people, that was all that really mattered in the end, whether or not there would be children at some point in someone’s life. To carry on legacies or keep the population of the island that they lived on up so that it wouldn’t stagnate until the few left couldn’t maintain their towns or villages anymore.</p>
<p>Besides, Belle had already been kissed by May, the baker’s daughter and before he’d left to become a Marine, she’d laid one on Ryan, the boy from the apple orchard on the other side of the way from their tangerine grove. It was no big deal.</p>
<p>Though, she could have done without the flashes of porn in between random childhood memories, hours spent in a snipers’ nest, and attending funerals. It did, however, confirm that in her previous life she had <em>not </em>been a female, because there were some sexual aspects that her counterpart could do that she most certainly couldn’t.</p>
<p>Yeah, that penis had really settled things.</p>
<p>Still, her previous self had had some <em>game</em>, from the flow of attractive people that went throughout his life.</p>
<p>Good job, past self!</p>
<p>~*~</p>
<p>“Kaa-san, I’m gonna join the Marines.”</p>
<p>The woman paused where she was drying off dishes with a towel, setting the plate in her hands down to turn and face Belle where she stood in the kitchen doorway.</p>
<p>The girl who had been a soldier before was fifteen, about two weeks into the year of it, and exhausted from training all day out in the woods by the cliff that no one else really went to because it was dangerous. More than one person had fallen to either death or grievous injury, so it was warned against – nearly forbidden – for people to go over there, which was precisely why she did it.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t do for everyone to see her practicing things that she’d never been taught on the island. Things that it was obvious she’d have needed instruction and a proper teacher for at some point in her life, which definitely hadn’t happened in this one.</p>
<p>“Oh,” her mother, Marie, blinked at her, leaning back against the counter behind her. “I thought for sure that you were going to go off and be a pirate.”</p>
<p>Something eased in her chest even as she beamed at her mother.</p>
<p>She loved her parents. Every version of her and incarnation of them fit together well.</p>
<p>“Well,” Belle eased into the kitchen, taking a seat at the table but careful not to get dirt on her mother’s favorite tablecloth. Her mom could get downright scary when angered. “I figure, I can be a pirate any time, right? Can’t be a Marine after you’ve been a pirate, can you? Warlords really, <em>really </em>don’t count.”</p>
<p>Warlords were just pirates the Marines were too afraid to try and remove, who sometimes did the dirty jobs that the Marines didn’t want linked to them.</p>
<p>“And you’re sure that this is something that you want to do?”</p>
<p>Running her dark purple and gray eyes over her mother in consideration, Belle paused for a moment, thinking.</p>
<p>Marie Sauveterre née Trafalgar – actually Trafalgar Marie from her home island; it was weird how surnames were switched in some places – had dark skin, naturally dark, not like a lifelong sunbather. While the woman wasn’t one of those once in a lifetime stunning beauties she definitely had something of an exotic kind of loveliness to her, what with her bright blue eyes and deep burgundy hair such a contrast from her warmly toned skin and all.</p>
<p>The woman had come from North Blue when she was a child with her parents on a merchant vessel looking to expand their horizons on and expenditure from their home island. The trade had fallen through to larger companies and they hadn’t had the money to charter a way back to North Blue.</p>
<p>She was a tall woman, tall and slim, and it was clear that Belle was taking after her in height if not build, seeing as she was a little thicker than her mother. But that likely had to do with all of the physical training she did when she wasn’t helping in the grove harvesting tangerines.</p>
<p>Marie had met Belle’s father, Jean, when she was twenty and he twenty-three on another island. She thinks it was called Gekko. When he was off delivering a large order of fresh tangerines to the young Lord who lived there.</p>
<p>It had been a whirlwind romance of her mother chasing her father all around until she’d worn him down enough to agree to date her, so perhaps a little desperate to end the stalking in her father’s case, really. Jean was a rather shy man, despite his large stature and somewhat intimidating countenance, thickly muscled and broad, and he really hadn’t known what to do with the aggressive attentions of the lovely North Blue woman.</p>
<p>After that, well, things had fallen into place and they’d gotten engaged and she’d followed him back to Cocoyashi and the family home. Her business acumen helping to keep everything afloat by taking up the trade half of the tangerine farming to broaden the Sauveterre spectrum.</p>
<p>In comparison to the dark beauty of her mother, her father was tall, thickly muscled, blond haired and gray eyed. He’d been born and raised on Conomi island in Cocoyashi village, and in comparison to the exotic looks of Marie, he was considered somewhat plain. Not that he was an unattractive man, but he wasn’t exactly what one thought of when they thought of Marie getting snagged.</p>
<p>Jean was just a pale skinned blond man, and he burned easily in the sun, which was something that was only mitigated by the sunscreens that he slathered on religiously every morning before they descended upon the orchards.</p>
<p>If there was one thing that she was glad to have not inherited from her father, it was his easily damaged skin. Though if she was inside for more than a week her skin color faded to that same pale pink of his own, she’d found when she was laid up one week sick as a dog. It didn’t take getting a sunburn to bring her tan back, it came back easily enough as if Belle-Mère were a browning nut over the fire.</p>
<p>Belle thought they were perfect for each other, and Belle wanted to protect them, as they’d protected her as she’d grown; despite all the difficulties she’d given them.</p>
<p>She'd do what she'd been doing lifetimes over for the people she loved.</p>
<p>“I’m positive, Kaa-san.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Another chapter of what I have pre-written! I don't have much more pre-written, but I'll try to find motivation, lol.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Of course, she didn’t immediately go off and join the goddamn Marines.</p>
<p>Belle might be reckless, but she wasn’t a fucking idiot despite what others might say about her punch first policies. Jumping onto the first ship willing to take her to the nearest base would probably be the stupidest thing she could do at this point in her life.</p>
<p>No, that would have been a <em>bit</em> too sudden, especially when she didn’t quite feel that she was up to it, not yet.</p>
<p>Belle freely admitted to holding herself to more exacting standards than she held other people, but she felt that if she couldn’t be harsh on herself, who could she be hard on? She decided that she’d wait until after her sixteenth birthday to sign on to be a Government lapdog. Take her time to train herself up and use the money she’d been saving up to get herself some weapons. Hopefully, with enough money she’d be able to get the specifications she wanted.</p>
<p>There were a lot of things about weapon-smithing she didn’t know, so who even knew if what the previous her had could be <em>made </em>the way she remembered?</p>
<p>If there was one thing that she was sure of, it was that the weaponry from her previous life was much better. Belle knew that she wanted top of the line if she had her own life, and the lives of others hanging in the balance.</p>
<p>Being a soldier, that was something she’d always known was more about protecting than about fighting. It wasn’t about winning – although that was always a relief, what made the danger most worth it – it was about making sure that as many people as possible survived whatever conflicts they got into. Belle had enough nightmares about people she didn’t even know dying because who she’d been before had been too slow.</p>
<p>That wasn’t something she could avoid, she knew. At least intellectually, she knew. Her heart was a different story.</p>
<p>Belle might be able to take a punch and laugh at a knife drawn in her face, but the thought of her mother getting hurt, her father, her friends…</p>
<p>She didn’t want that.</p>
<p>Not in this new life.</p>
<p>She’d already started to worry about what would happen if someone else got ahold of her designs or the actual weapons, but there really wasn’t much she could do about it in her current state. Belle reluctantly but firmly set aside that weight for when she was older, and it became an actual issue. As it was, she was a no name punk on a no name island in the ‘weakest Blue’ where no one expected much from anyone.</p>
<p>Not even prospective Marines.</p>
<p>Once people saw the effects of her weapons, she knew that the problem would <em>really</em> begin to sprout. IF there was one thing she was certain of in both of her lives, it was that lethality was well sought after; everyone wanted the bigger stick.</p>
<p>But that wasn’t something she could do anything about, so she’d let that worry lie until she knew exactly what her situation was at the time and what her options would be.</p>
<p>“Belle-Mère, are you sure you want to be a Marine?” possibly her only good friend, Genzo, a young man who was nearly a decade her senior, asked. “I mean… why do you even want to be one?”</p>
<p>“Well, other than wanting to kick ass, you mean?”</p>
<p>She was sketching out blueprints, as she’d been very well acquainted with the weapons she had in her previous life. Had memorized every little detail to know how to fix her own equipment, how to care for it. To know how to prevent a backfire, how to fix things when they jammed and her life was on the line, the lives of her friends. Brothers and sisters at arms.</p>
<p>He sputtered and she looked up at him with a grin, making him scowl at her in embarrassed irritation. Genzo was really easily embarrassed, and it was him yelling at her for being so shameless that made up a good half of their conversation.</p>
<p>A fun guy.</p>
<p>He was honest, and she appreciated that on the days when she’d woken shivering in a cold sweat because she could almost taste what it was like to feel someone’s guts perforate. What it was like to watch eyes go glassy and the expectation of stoicism in the face of the death of a friend.</p>
<p>If he was sad, he cried like a child, if he was happy he laughed and smiled until his face hurt. If he was angry or embarrassed, he yelled and turned red and told her just where to shove it.</p>
<p>Genzo was refreshing on the not-so-good days.</p>
<p>“No, <em>really</em>, Belle-Mère. Why would someone who likes breaking rules so much want to uphold the <em>law</em>?”</p>
<p>“It’s…” she paused, staring down at her work, at the scribbled measurements, the precise lines. Belle wasn’t an artist, but this was just getting down the basics to talk to a professional over. “It’s not about wanting to uphold the law, Gen-chan. Not really. I just want to protect people from the bad pirates,” she held up her hand when he opened his mouth to protest that <em>all </em>Pirates were bad. Always predictable, her Genzo. “I know what you think about pirates, Gen-chan, but Kaa-san has a few friends who became pirates, and sometimes Tou-chan sells to them, so just listen, okay? I want…”</p>
<p>Biting her lip, she sat back, running a hand through her long mane of thick, wavy-curly red-violet hair before crossing her arms over her chest. Her hair was getting irritating, and she couldn’t wait to be able to cut it the way that she wanted, away from her mother’s scandalized face at even the mention of cutting it.</p>
<p>As if anyone needed to see a ridiculous amount of hair to know Belle was female. As if femininity were at all something that she actually cared about.</p>
<p>She was just lucky she wasn’t experiencing that dysphoria she’d read about because past her had had a dick and she didn’t.</p>
<p>Despite the nightmares and the remembered loneliness – and the truly <em>fantastic </em>sex, apparently – she hadn’t had that particular problem. She’d fight anybody who gave people who <em>did </em>have that problem until their eyes bled and they kept their tongues if she had to.</p>
<p>“You know about all that shit that’s going on out there,” she said after a moment. “It might not be here yet, in East Blue, or even at Conomi, but it’s <em>happening</em>, Gen-chan. I want to be able to make sure that it doesn’t manage to get here because no one else out there will care if it does. That no one here, in our peaceful village on our tiny island, has to deal with some of the bad things that are happening in the other Blues and on the Grand Line.”</p>
<p>For a moment, he sat, silent, before he sighed and ran his hand over his face in something like exasperated fondness. Despite how outwardly emotional he was, Genzo actually had a good head on his shoulders, even if he was a stubborn piece of shit.</p>
<p>“I guess that’s a pretty good reason. But, hey, what are you going to give me for eating my lunch? I’m starving!”</p>
<p>“Oh, my, Gen-chan! Are you sure that you’re not just hungry for something else?”</p>
<p>“Gah! And here for a second I thought you were actually mature!”</p>
<p>~*~</p>
<p>The sea air against her newly shaved scalp was the best.</p>
<p>After boot camp was over, she shaved the left and right sides of her head, which felt much better and her mother couldn’t get on her case because she wasn’t there. Also, it wouldn’t be on her official documentation until the next time she needed her picture taken for verification. Just another way that her mother would be delayed in finding out about Belle’s preferred hairstyle.</p>
<p>Belle still looked fine as fuck, if she did say so herself.</p>
<p>Take that, stereotyped femininity. People wanted her to step on them and call her Ma’am because she was hot shit, even if she didn’t have a waterfall of hair strangling her.</p>
<p>While basic training had pretty much been a piece of cake – sometimes she wondered at the lack of athleticism that some people had – it <em>had</em> been long hours outside under the sun. The breeze that she could now feel, not having so much hair locking in heat, was something of a relief from the sweat-soaked mop she’d miserably endured.</p>
<p>She kept her bangs because they reminded her of her mother, but otherwise she kept her hair out of her face and straight back in a segmented ponytail or a three-strand over braid. What she knew as a Dutch braid from Before – to make sure that it wasn’t about to get in the way or caught on anything. The lack of thick strands made it much easier to tame, especially as the heat made her wavy hair get all the more unruly.</p>
<p>Her shaved sides weren’t to the scalp, and she’d decided every rank she jumped she’d get a new design put in.</p>
<p>She’d contemplated tattoos, but she didn’t know what she’d want, and there was only so much vanity she actually cared for. Maybe when she had her own ship or something.</p>
<p>As she’d been hoping, she got into officer classes because of her test grades, both physical and mental, meaning that she could get specialized training and then start her way up the rung to a command position. There were a few second sons of minor Nobles as well shunted in automatically, but break enough bones of your opponents and they stop sneering or leering.</p>
<p>It wasn’t that Belle particularly <em>wanted</em> to be in charge of a group of Marines, but it seemed familiar to be in a leading position. Like the way that her reflexes had her moving during a fight felt natural, muscle memory she’d never actually learned this time around.</p>
<p>Just another piece of her puzzle.</p>
<p>How shaving her head, even just the sides, felt natural, more her and less than what other people wanted her to be.</p>
<p>Belle didn’t do only things that were more comfortable, of course. Because she <em>certainly </em>wasn’t comfortable with learning how to use a sword, since she had no prior experience in either life. Still, she was willing to learn with the rest of the beginners in her classes, not willing to just lack a skill because she disliked it. Well, not so much that she <em>disliked</em> it, as she would never be more than competent with the sword even if she gained a lifetime’s worth of experience.</p>
<p>It just felt more natural to use her guns and her knives over any long bladed weapon. Getting up close and personal felt like a last resort.</p>
<p>She’d rather shoot them from a distance, even if she could crack skulls with her fists. Swords were just weird and ungainly feeling in her hands.</p>
<p>She wasn’t comfortable with the way that the majority of the Marines treated female recruits either, but she did her best to take those less thick skinned under her own protection. This was, of course, after she’d made it clear that she would take no one’s shit, be it verbal or physical.</p>
<p>If there was one thing that Belle wasn’t, it was an easy target, and after a while all of the sneering, leering, and jeering went away under her steely stare. Well, that and the fact that she’d never been defeated except by an instructor in her combat classes, even by those older and stronger than her.</p>
<p>The fact that she’d tutored some of the other women for their combat classes had helped them as well, meaning that the men couldn’t sneak a grope and get away with it. Instead, they got fists to the face and tender internal organs instead. It really only took a few broken bones for people to realize they were making stupid decisions before they couldn’t take it anymore.</p>
<p>By the time she’d left each training group, women had continued the trend for their fellow trainees and men learned a little bit more about equality.</p>
<p>From all of her time outside she’d gotten quite the tan, though she would never be as dark as her mother was, she was sure. Not with the addition of her father’s baby pale skin into her genetics and that was okay. Belle was just happy that she didn’t really get sunburns even though, if she wasn’t outside often, she was just as pale as her East Blue born father.</p>
<p>Personally, she liked her new look, the way that her hair suited her and her purple and gray eyes popped with the darkened complexion she sported after boot camp. Her sleek muscles and long physique – which was getting curvier by the day – helping her to be quick and precise in her combat drills. She’d had more than one person make comments about her crushing someone’s head between her thighs where they thought she couldn’t hear them.</p>
<p>Belle was a dangerous woman, with more muscle than a lot of the men in her classes and she knew it perfectly well. She could kick all their asses ninety-five percent of the time without breaking a sweat.</p>
<p>Looked damn fine doing it, too.</p>
<p>Within a year of joining, she’d made it to Junior Grade Lieutenant. Which was a pretty fast advancement, all things considered, since she hadn’t even finished her classes until six months after enlisting, and she was pleased with her progress. Mostly she hadn’t seen any hard combat, generally dealing with squabbles around the base that she was assigned to, but she was looking forward to being sent to sea.</p>
<p>Not so much to fight pirates as to get out under the sun atop the water, where the wind tasted like salt and adventure.</p>
<p>No shame in wanting to jump out and grasp her dreams with both hands, but she could be patient. Belle had waited this long, the ocean and adventure and the <em>world </em>would still be there when she was done.</p>
<p>And she’d be ready.</p>
<p>The gunsmith from back home in Cocoyashi had managed to fill her order for her pistols, custom though they were. He’d sworn up a storm in all the letters they’d exchanged, and Belle had cheerfully sworn right back at him because that was just the way they communicated.</p>
<p>In spite of all the cussing going around, Belle was quite pleased with the way they turned out, though she knew that she’d likely be making her own adjustments to them as she used them more and more.</p>
<p>She was going to save up a lot more money before she even thought about having the rifle she wanted made, because the metal that she wanted to use to do it was pretty pricy. If she didn’t want it to be disturbingly soft and useless then she’d need to have it prepared in a certain way, which required Grand Line expertise.</p>
<p>The explanation of this had had a lot of words her parents would never hear from her lips, but Belle liked to feel that she’d expanded her vocabulary adequately. Jacob was good like that, ornery old bastard that he was.</p>
<p>It was a bit of a bummer, but she’d rather have good work done later over shoddy work immediately, especially since she expected to be using that sniper rifle for a long, long time.</p>
<p>Just in case, she’d had old man Jacob at the village destroy her blueprints for her pistols, since she didn’t want the knowledge of them getting out. Luckily she’d gotten on with him pretty well – screaming arguments over engineering aside – doing errands for him and learning basic maintenance. Taking in the lessons about the weapons of this world as opposed to the other that he’d shoved down her throat with cheer. Grumpy though he was, he’d simply been pleased with even <em>making </em>her sidearms for her, willing to remove the evidence as long as she continued to be a patron of his shop.</p>
<p>He didn’t <em>say </em>it like that, but they spoke the same language.</p>
<p>Even though she was saving money up and being pretty cheap all things considered, she did send money home to her parents, about ten percent of her pay each time it came in just to help them out. How much more Marines got paid than simple tangerine farmers was freaking ridiculous in Belle’s opinion. Literally a baby Marine and she made more, even if it wasn’t all that much in the grand scheme of things because the Marines only provided so much.</p>
<p>Belle still had to pay for her amenities, mostly, and anything off duty was definitely coming out of the paycheck. Though they did supply the standard uniforms for everyone, even if it was only limited to four a year. Some crews got a higher uniform allowance, but that was more for the front line crews and the Admiralty than the dregs.</p>
<p>Still, she often embellished how much she was earning in her letters home so that her parents didn’t worry and would actually accept the godforsaken money in the heart that it was meant in.</p>
<p>Genzo at least could be counted on not to let slip to her parents what she was doing, even if he got huffy about it. He understood familial duty and taking care of your loved ones.</p>
<p>Belle might miss home, but she couldn’t <em>wait </em>to face the world.</p>
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